I’m getting much faster at splicing!
After a few weeks of living with it, we had grown quite tired of our recently-bent stanchion. In our opinion, it looked very out of place and unfitting on our beautiful boat. For this reason, we were extremely pleased to find that the Sea Services chandlery in Fort de France had everything we needed to replace both it and the starboard lifelines running through it. Yes, unfortunately, in order to substitute the new stanchion for the bent one, we were required to cut one spliced end off the lifelines so that they could be pulled out of the bent one and then threaded back into the new one. Although I did splice a new eye back onto the newly shortened lifeline, attempting to reuse it, in our opinion the finished product ended up too short to be practical. Not to worry, we were able to pick up new line at the chandlery and with a little bit of work, and of course a sum of money, it’s better than new.
Bonus: I was ultimately able to re-task one of the old lifelines, installing it on the bow of our boat, a spot where strangely there had never been one (at least since we have owned her).
While I was splicing eyes into the line, I had some fun with our GoPro camera and filmed the following how-to clip. As you’ll see by watching it, I speeded up the footage just a tad. The actual elapsed time to do that one splice was in the neighborhood of 9 minutes. If you look in the pics above you’ll see a white board with various marks on it. Although I didn’t use this in the video, you can speed up the process of doing multiple splices considerably by creating a jig of sorts with all the required measurements marked onto it (watch the video to see what I mean).
That was pretty awesome. I can’t wait to make one of those myself one day.
I’m sure you’d do a great job.
Wow Mike, nicely done. VERY informative of course.
But, but, but, a KITCHEN knife? Sigh, where’s your sailor’s knife?
Reading along as always,
Jim
I used a cutting board from the galley so I thought it was appropriate.
It looks like you used a regular knife. I had a hard time cutting Dyneema so I bought a ceramic knife and it cuts through like butter.
Yes, a ceramic blade is recommended. I don’t have one though. 🙁
That is an excellent little video thanks. It is clearer and far less boring than the long prosaic videos you find from Google. All I had to do was cut off the ‘musak’ and re-watch it and enjoy it. It was a good splice too! 🙂
Incidentally I quite agree about the wisdom of 2 lifelines at the bow. I don’t know why it is not standard.
Mike
You didn’t like the music? That was the best part!
Good to see you had your anchor ball rigged! 🙂
Mike
Always do. It serves dual purpose as it also gets the spinnaker halyard away from the mast so that it doesn’t bang.
Very good lesson bro. My last two attempts took about 2 hours each following google sourced diagrams. Enjoying your blogs daily, thank you.
Thanks Jim. Like anything, the more you do them, the faster you get. This is actually the fastest and easiest of all the splices IMO.
The music was GREAT and I’m an OWG.
Jim
I thought for a moment in that reflection, you had a balloon tied to your camera, until I realized it was more than likely an anchoring ball shadow… it was a pleasant and funny thought while I had it!
Enjoyed the video. I’ve done splices with the Boy Scouts, but not any nautical ones – I’ll have to give that a go. This is definitely a newbie question, what kind of line are you using and what makes it the right rope for a lifeline?
I really like your site. Thanks for posting so much great stuff for us to drool over.
It is Amsteel.
http://www.samsonrope.com/index.cfm?rope=190
AmSteel® is a nonrotational, Samthane-coated 12-strand single braid that yields high strength and low stretch; equivalent to wire rope with one-seventh the weight. In addition, the product is flexible, spliceable, and resists flex-fatigue and abrasion.
Features:
Fiber: Dyneema®
Standard Color: gray (also available by special order in red, black, and green)
High strength
Floats-will not absorb water
Easily spliced
Extremely lightweight
Wire replacement
Durable-outlasts wire rope
Spliceable–Class II 12-strand
Applications:
Competition Grade Running Rigging
Kite/Wakeboard/Waterski Lines
Trawl and Bridle Lines
Wire Replacement – Non Jacketed
High Performance Tug Lines
Nuttin like doing a boat repair in paradise!!!
Yes, there are worse things.